Arella’s Fateful Encounter

This story is by Renee King and was part of our 2024 Spring Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Elder willed his worn-out body to walk more swiftly so he would not miss Arella before she had to go to her next class. “I can’t give up now, I don’t know how much longer I have,” he muttered. He grimaced as he took each painful step, visualizing the promise he made to her parents as the tears trickled down his wrinkled face.

“I must hurry,” Elder said to himself as he walked faster to try and meet up with his niece today. Elder was in deep thought as he painfully walked to catch Arella on her lunch break at college. She had been angry and avoided him for almost a year now, she refused to hear any words of comfort he had to offer. She told him she would never listen to anything that resembled his or her parents’ faith or their outdated beliefs, she would find her own truth and peace as she screamed at him and walked away.

Finally arriving at the outside, dining grounds, he spied his fiery, red-headed, last surviving relative sitting with a group of friends under a shade tree. I hope she will give me a minute this time instead of running off saying she was late for class.

Approaching slowly not to scare her away, his green, piercing eyes met her own, sensing some emotional connection between the two of them, he bravely stepped forward.

“Arella,” he said softly, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you and I really would like to talk with you. Do you mind dropping by my house on your way home today?”

Arella, red faced, but nodding, “Yeah, I can do that,” she said. Dismissing him as she turned back to her conversation with her friends as he slowly faded from her peripheral vision.

“Why does your uncle keep coming here and bothering you,” her best friend Luna asked? “Doesn’t he know you aren’t interested in hearing anything coming from his lips or the minds of his generation? I thought you made that clear at the funeral.”

“I think he thinks he’s supposed to watch over me or something like that, after what happened to my parents last year. But I’m fine, they left me in decent shape financially, so I’m doing good on my own and  old enough to make decisions that are right for me, so truthfully, why do I need him?” Arella boasted triumphantly.

Luna and her friends nodding their heads in agreement, looking, and smiling in each other’s eyes, saying in unison their favorite, new mantra from their latest influencer “To our own selves, we will be true!”

After their heartfelt declaration, Arella stood up and said, “Sorry to break all this fun up but I’ve got to head to class. See you guys tomorrow.” She left them feeling very thankful for their emotional support and friendship during the sickness of her parents.  “I’m not going to Elder’s this afternoon or any afternoon for that matter, it’s all his fault my parents’ aren’t here anymore. It should have been him that died from that horrible virus, not them!” she protested to herself out loud, as she tried to silence the voice in her head and strong nudge she was feeling telling her that she needed to go and talk with her uncle.

As fate would have it, Elder too felt she was not coming and decided to go wait near her home until she made it back. At the first glance of seeing his brother and sister-in-law’s home, the memories of their last year together and of all the sickness that led to both of her parents’ death flooded his mind. No wonder she was pushing him away, the pain of seeing him had to be too much since he unknowingly brought the virus to them.

“Arella,” he called, as he saw her walk up the steps to her house.

Frozen, she turned to look him in the eyes, and saw the tears streaming down his face which mirrored her own. Her heart painfully aware for the first time, he had lost them too.

Following her into the house, silence filled the room as they sat down facing each other. Elder took her hands and held them gently as they tearfully and quietly shared their own personal heart break.

“Arella, you must know I blame myself for your loss. I wish it would have been God’s plan to take me instead of your mom and dad. But I must ask you, after all this time of blaming God or me, searching and trying to find some peace in the middle of your pain, are you becoming more of your true self that you have been searching so hard for? You know both of our feelings have been on an emotional roller coaster of constant change so they can’t always be trusted. They can help us discover our pathway but can’t be our only guiding force. God has a plan for all of our lives, and we have to trust it is a good plan even when it doesn’t feel very good. His truth doesn’t change, what is morally right or morally wrong doesn’t change either. Yes, our circumstances are always changing and out of our control, but we can’t let them shake the core of who we are or who we want to become when they do,” said Elder.

“I’m trying to find the me before all this happened. The faith-filled person I used to be, but it’s so hard to trust the One who gave me my parents and then took them away. I just don’t understand His ways because they don’t seem very loving to me at all. I really appreciate you coming, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. I need to get by myself so I can quiet my thoughts and listen for that old, familiar voice that is always speaking truth to me. Here lately, I have been refusing to listen to it. I’ve let my pain and the loudest voice I hear in my head tell me it’s okay for me to act, react and respond anyway I feel like,” she said.

“I know you will live up to your name your parents instinctively gave you. Please take all the time you need to work out and discover your own faith again. I remember the day when your dad placed you in my arms to hold for the first time, he proudly said, brother, meet the next messenger of God, Arella. Your name alone sets you apart and you’ve had a call on your life since your birth. Pain and disappointment have its way of making us forget who we really are and the things that truly matter,” he said.

Rising to leave with an endearing hug at the door, Elder left Arella’s house for the last time. He knew the virus had taken the best out of him too, but he had completed his work for this generation as well as keeping his promise he made to his brother and sister-in-law.

The next day at lunch Arella asked Luna and her friends, “Would you guys be upset if we changed our mantra a bit, back to how it use to be before influencers became popular?  I must confess, I had it all wrong. I have been so blinded by my pain I was leading us all away from our old truths and what is right.” ‘For us to be true to ourselves we must let the Truth of God’s word be our constant influencer!’ Arella, messenger of God proclaimed.

Nodding their heads in agreement, looking, and smiling in each other’s eyes they repeated their new mantra in unison. “For us to be true to ourselves we must let the Truth of God’s word be our constant influencer!”